Case: Monthly SEO Support for «Вільне радіо» (Donetsk Region)

«Вільне радіо» — a regional media organization covering the situation in Donetsk Region and helping internally displaced people navigate benefits, services, and everyday issues during the war. The publication engaged us for ongoing monthly SEO support, including a transition to a new website design — a process that is often accompanied by traffic losses.

Goals

Complete the website migration without losing organic traffic and ensure steady growth — against the backdrop of a challenging region for media, where the situation changes every day.

What We Did Every Month

  • Content briefs for new materials — topics were selected by the editorial team or suggested by us, based on search demand and competition
  • Content briefs for updating previously published articles — moving content from the second or third page of Google to the first
  • Regular technical website checkups — promptly fixing metadata errors, broken pages, and mobile speed issues
  • Internal linking between articles and sections to improve rankings
  • Tag system optimization — removing duplicate and outdated pages and ensuring metadata was correct

Starting Point and Challenge

Moving a website to a new design is a critical moment for any media organization: changes to the structure, URLs, and layout can often lead to a sharp drop in rankings and traffic while Google “relearns” the new website. An additional challenge was Google’s August core update, which could also have affected visibility.

Result

  • The website migration was completed without traffic losses — no decline related to technical issues or the design change was recorded
  • The website also went through Google’s August update without losses
  • Organic search remains the largest traffic acquisition channel over the past year
  • Search traffic over six months: 528,000 clicks and 18.7 million impressions
  • CTR increased from 2.1% to 2.8% — despite a decrease in impressions, the content became more closely aligned with the audience’s actual search queries
  • The “Recommendations” channel (Google Discover) doubled: from 35.7K to 80.4K clicks over six months
  • The number of new users, time on site, and depth of visit increased across all key audience segments over the past three months

A website migration is one of the moments when SEO support is most critical: without monitoring the technical health of the website and rankings during the transition, media organizations can lose months of accumulated traffic within just a few days. Regular monthly SEO support allowed «Вільне радіо» not only to avoid losses, but also to reach a new level of growth — with a more relevant and engaged audience.